The present invention relates to automated testing of computing systems and in particular to automated testing of the supported interface elements of computing systems.
It is well-known in the art to have various testing tools and test harnesses to test computing systems. One area of testing that requires particular attention in this respect is in testing systems that are intended to behave externally as if they were other systems—for example, testing systems designed to emulate or virtualize other systems or system architectures while having different internal structures, sequences of instructions and operating characteristics. Another example is the testing of a modified or enhanced system to determine that it still supports all the functions and behavioural characteristics of a predecessor system (sometimes known as “regression testing”). When the operator command-line interfaces of operating systems need to be tested after enhancement, or when an operating system needs to have its command-line interface characteristics reproduced on a different architecture, a large amount of somewhat repetitive testing is required, leading to potential problems of lack of adequate coverage and human errors caused by the nature of the testing task.